External mode on the BSP was only validated on 2015b and requires specific dependencies on the deployed image. Looks like MathWorks have changed them slightly and aren't documented.

If you have to use external mode I would suggest using the HSP from MathWorks. With that said, external mode itself has limited performance especially for communication type applications that have high data rates. It will usually max out at ~5kHz.

Also, the ADI and MathWorks SD card images are not interchangeable. If you are using the BSP use the ADI image and for the HSP use the MathWorks image.

What commit are you using from the 2017a branch? There are two recent bugs that prevented to HDL targets from showing up correctly. One was Zed RX so I'm not sure what got generated from workflow advisor.

We're using the latest commit and yes, we added the RX-Only target by editing hdlcoder_board_customization.m (iirc). I don't think that this is the cause, though.

The error is the same when using a Non-Mathworks SDCard for the HW/SW-Codesign workflow. Unfortunately, the message doesn't distinguish between software incompatibilities and physical connection errors (let alone further details).

External mode on the BSP was only validated on 2015b and requires specific dependencies on the deployed image. Looks like MathWorks have changed them slightly and aren't documented.

If you have to use external mode I would suggest using the HSP from MathWorks. With that said, external mode itself has limited performance especially for communication type applications that have high data rates. It will usually max out at ~5kHz.

Also, the ADI and MathWorks SD card images are not interchangeable. If you are using the BSP use the ADI image and for the HSP use the MathWorks image.